Winter, winter
overland low on gas,
on the way to the ER—
is it an abscess?
Flurries
on the shortest day,
the winter solstice,
moonlight on incisors,
a tooth ache in the parking lot
fossils among crowns,
an abscess, under the enamel,
are you sure?
It’s dark already,
fearing the worst
what else did the doctor say?
It will take a backhoe to extract
America,
to clear the land of ice.
Elizabeth Krajeck is the author of two chapbooks and collaborations inspired by the visual arts including “Restoration Poetry” based on interviews in the Blue Triangle Residence Hall; “Half of What We Are Is Broken” an installation at IUPUI’s Cultural Arts Center; urban retail postcard poems; the paint chip poems; and 2018/2019 “Poetry in Free Motion” with the Quilt Connection Guild. The community liaison for Butler’s Center for Citizenship and Community, Krajeck started Permanent Press, Writers and Editors. Recent work includes publication in So it Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library; 2017 summer guest reader at the James Whitcomb Riley Museum; participant in 2017 Indy Writers Resist; and 2019 “True Grit Saloon Reading” at the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indian and Western Art.